As the painful United Nations climate negotiations inch along the road to Paris 2015, we are faced with two options: ethical, selfless action, or a descent into barbaric self-interest.

I DOUBT I WILL EVER forget the emotional footage that I observed from the 2013 global Climate Change Conference (COP) in Warsaw, Poland. The Warsaw COP was a critical step in the road map for implementing the successor to the Kyoto Protocol, which expired in 2012, and obtaining financial commitments from industrialised countries for the 'loss and damage' that global warming has already caused to poor nations (also known as 'climate debt' or 'climate reparations').

The gathering took place just days after Super Typhoon Haiyan struck the Philippines, killing approximately 10,000 people and displacing more than 600,000. Dr Jeff Masters, director of the Weather Underground, was one of the few meteorologists to link Typhoon Haiyan with climate change:

Since hurricanes are heat engines that take heat energy from the oceans and convert it to the energy of their winds, rising ocean temperatures due to global warming should make the strongest storms stronger…Hurricane scientists expect to see a 2 per cent to 11 per cent increase in the intensity of hurricanes and typhoons (aka tropical cyclones) by 2100.

Against this backdrop, Naderev "Yeb" Saño, leader of the Philippines Climate Change Commission rose to give his opening statement. What followed was a cry, not only from the Philippines, but also on behalf of all developing countries that have been the hardest hit by climate change. Unable to hold back tears, Saño pleaded:

"If not us, then who? If not now, then when? If not here in Warsaw, where? What my country is going through as a result of this extreme climate event is madness. The climate crisis is madness. We can stop this madness. Right here in Warsaw.

In that speech Saño announced something quite extraordinary. He announced to COP delegates that he would fast until talks yield progress. For the next two weeks, Saño did not break his fast. He was also joined by over 200 people and received substantial support from international NGO's and civil society.

My initial reaction to Saño's act was deep admiration. This was the first time that a lead country representative had the integrity and ethical courage to take a stand inside the COP itself. Saño showed that delegates are more than cogs inside a machine. They are individuals with agency and the freedom to make ethical decisions.

In an age where instrumental rationality or 'means-to-end' thinking dominates, Saño's action highlights an alternative way of being and helps us to rethink our own agency within complex systems. Understanding both how power operates in multilateral negotiations and our own ability to make ethical judgements is of critical importance as we approach the 2015 Paris climate negotiations.

The Paris COP represents the most important climate conference since the failed Copenhagen COP in 2009. Indeed, environmental lawyer Vernon Rive argues that Paris represents the "defining moment for the future of climate negotiations and therefore the planet". If the international community fails again, we throw ourselves to the vagaries of the Security Council or to the higher arbiter, Mother Nature herself.

Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), has expressed strong confidence that a binding international treaty will be signed in 2015. To push negotiations along, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon will convene a one-day 'Climate Summit' in New York on 23 September 2014. Ban has urged world leaders to "announce bold actions and bold commitments" at the summit.

Alongside the uncertainty about whether 194 countries can sign an agreement to mitigate global warming there are other pressing questions. Will such an agreement be ethical? Will it concentrate existing power or spread it horizontally? Whose voices will be heard in the multilateral negotiations? Who will benefit and who will suffer?

Perhaps the most contentious issue on the road to Paris is whether or not rich countries should pay reparations for climate damage to poor countries. Todd Stern, the US special envoy for climate change and lead climate negotiator, has been unequivocal in his rejection of climate debt:

I actually completely reject the notion of a debt or reparations or anything of the like. Let's just be mindful of the fact for most of the 200 years since the Industrial Revolution, people were blissfully ignorant of the fact that emissions cause the greenhouse effect...We absolutely recognise our historical role in putting emissions in the atmosphere that are there now. But the sense of guilt or culpability or reparations, I categorically reject that.

On one interpretation of Stern's statement, the window for making repayment claims can only be dated to 1990 when the link between carbon emissions and climate change was verified by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's first assessment. However, it was clear from the Warsaw COP that the US opposes efforts to help developing countries adapt to climate change.

I fear that as pressure mounts for multilateral climate negotiations to yield progress, power will concentrate in fewer hands and the interests of poorer countries will continue to be sidelined. The poor will continue to buffer the rich and negotiations will descend into the "barbarism" described by the brilliant 18th Century Italian philosopher Giambattista Vico.

Vico argued that barbarism occurs when individuals each think only of their own interests and without concern for the society or community in which they live. Vico describes this barbarism as follows: "such peoples, like so many beasts, have fallen into the custom of each man thinking only of his own private interests and have reached the extreme delicacy, or better of pride, in which like wild animals they bristle and lash out at the slightest displeasure."

Vico's description of this barbaric mindset is uncannily reminiscent of climate negotiations to date. To extract ourselves from the cultural pathology of alienation we need to summon the courage for ethical thought and action. We must be willing to take risks and, if need be, to 'put our bodies on the line'.

Finally, like the Filipino negotiator Yeb Saño, we need to understand that we have choices, even within complex systems or bureaucracies. We all have the capacity for ethical courage and our judgements can influence, not only the course of human history but also whether we can look back on our lives and say that we have lived with integrity.

Dr Peter D Burdon is a senior lecturer at the Adelaide Law School. He is currently a visiting Scholar at the University of California Berkeley. He can be followed on twitter at @Pete_Burdon.

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Comments (6)

Peter of Melbourne :

22 May 2014 2:50:50pm

Well Pete how about looking to your own backyard which is responsible for the bulk of humanitys CO2 being released into the atmosphere before getting on your high horse and preaching to Australians who are responsible for less than 1.5% of the issue. I like most Australians are sick to death of the climate crazies expecting us to appease their useless bloody ego's.

billee :

23 May 2014 5:58:28pm

Australians provide 30% of the worlds coalWe are the worst environmental vandals by a long wayif we dig it up then it gets burntit doesn't matter who burns itCO2 is a global crisisThe only way to stop burning coal is to stop digging it upIt's time Australians admitted the ugly truth

SuzyO :

24 May 2014 7:59:30am

Yep Peter of Melbourne lets look at our own backyard. Australians have the honour of having reached the no.1 spot in the world for per capita emissions. This in the continent blessed with ample sun, wind, wave and geothermal energy! A lucky country but not a foresighted or clever one.

Eric Ireland :

24 May 2014 3:02:27pm

If every country takes that approach, we can guarantee the status quo will prevail. The truth is, every little bit helps, including Australia's 1.5% contribution to the problem, and your own, personal 0.000000075% contribution.

Socrates :

22 May 2014 9:43:13am

Barbarism or not? A good question. I too hope for positive result in 2015 but remain uncertain about our ability to work collectively. The President of the US has made clear statements about AGW and the need to act but may be hamstrung by the creationist anti-science extreme-right in Congress.

We did miss a window of opportunity during the ascendancy of the 'Merchants of Doubt' but that dog seems to have had its day. If a genuine and practical response is found in 2015, future generations will look back in thanks or, we could descend into barbarism; extreme weather, political, economic and social dysfunction, mass migration from coasts etc. Throw in a pandemic or two and things could get grim indeed.

Guy Abrahams :

22 May 2014 4:42:26pm

Thanks Peter for this timely piece. "If not us, then who? If not now, then when?" paraphrases the writings of the Talmudic sage Hillel, and was most famously used by author Primo Levi as the title for his novel "If not now, when?" about Jewish partisans fighting the Nazis during World War II.

Saño's sentiment is manifestly relevant as the ramifications of our collective actions to combat climate change will resonate down through the ages, for good or for ill. It is indeed time for all of us as individuals to be heard, to take action, and to put our bodies on the line.

A recent article by Bill McKibben also eloquently makes this point in light of a mass rally planned to take place in New York in September this year. The current political climate in Australia calls for similar action. McKibben writes:

"You can watch the endgame of the fossil-fuel era with a certain amount of hope. The pieces are in place for real, swift, sudden change, not just slow and grinding linear shifts: If Germany on a sunny day can generate half its power from solar panels, and Texas makes a third of its electricity from wind, then you know technology isn't an impossible obstacle anymore. The pieces are in place, but the pieces won't move themselves. That's where movements come in. They're not subtle; they can't manage all the details of this transition. But they can build up pressure on the system, enough, with luck, to blow out those bags of money that are blocking progress with the force of Typhoon Haiyan on a Filipino hut. Because if our resistance fails, there will be ever-stronger typhoons. The moment to salvage something of the Holocene is passing fast. But it hasn't passed yet, which is why September is so important.

Day to day this resistance is rightly scattered, local and focused on the more mundane: installing a new zoning code, putting in a solar farm, persuading the church board to sell its BP stock. But sometimes it needs to come together and show the world how big it's gotten. That next great moment is late September in New York. See you there."

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